The Covenant
The Story - How the Bible Explains Everything February 15, 2026 Genesis 15 Notes
Because we live in a “contract world,” we often treat God like a “contract God.” We feel that if we have a bad week or a season of doubt, the deal is off. We live in fear that we’ve broken the contract and God is going to “evict” us from His grace. We default to “earning” rather than “receiving.” So we wonder, “Am I really right with God?” “Can I truly trust in His saving promises?” “What if I fail or doubt or wander astray?” We need assurances. Genesis 15 gives us assurance. It shows us that God Himself secures His saving promises.
In Genesis 15, Moses recorded how the LORD reassured Abram by declaring him righteous through faith and by unilaterally making a covenant in blood, guaranteeing the future fulfillment of His redemptive promises.
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Good morning, church. Good morning. Great seeing all of you here this morning. We're continuing our series entitled, “How the Bible Explains Everything.” And we're in part three of this twelve-week journey through the metanarrative of the Bible, dipping down on the major themes of the Bible from Genesis through Revelation over these twelve weeks.
And the Bible is an amazing book. It is one book. The Greek word, “biblios,” is translated, “Bible,” which literally means “the book.” And that's what it is. It's one book made up of 66 books written by over 40 human authors over a period of 1500 years.
There's no other book like it. And its author is God. And we believe on every page that if we look closely enough, we can find Jesus revealed on every page, layer by layer, more and more. Revelation fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And that's what we're doing in this series is we're looking for Jesus.
We're looking for the good news about Christ on every page. And we're going to be looking at an important story today about the covenant that God made with Abram, whose name was later changed to Abraham. And we're looking at Abram and this covenant. But before we do, in order to understand the weight of this moment in chapter 15 of Genesis, let's look back over the last couple of weeks quickly.
The first week we looked at the creation and the fall and we saw that God made a good world. He made man in his own image. But sin entered the story, fellowship was broken and death entered in. But yet God made a promise that a coming seed would come that would crush the serpent's head. And then last week, in week two, we looked at the catastrophe that human wickedness had come to such a place, such a multiplied place, that God judged the earth through a worldwide flood.
Yet even in judgment, he showed mercy. He provided an ark and rescued humanity through the man Noah, and gave him a covenant promise, a rainbow in the sky, saying, I'll never destroy the earth in this way again. And now we come to chapter 15 of Genesis, “The Covenant.” And we see God moving from preserving a remnant to preparing a Redeemer..
In summary, in this chapter, you're going to see what I'm talking about as we continue today because he moves from the story of Abram to really talking about Abram's seed, which is fulfilled in Jesus. And he talks about a covenant. Now, how is a covenant different from a contract? God's talk. He gave Noah a covenant and now he gives an even greater covenant to Abram.
How are they different? Well, a contract is a transaction. A contract is a transaction. You sign a contract with your cell phone provider and if you stop paying, they stop providing.
It's a contract that you pay. It's temporary. Lawyers get involved, money's involved, your effort is involved. It's a trade of services. It's temporary and conditional.
That's a contract. How's a covenant different? Well, if a contract is a transaction, a covenant is a transformation, a covenant you enter into and you're saying for better, for worse, for rich or for poor. Instead of saying, I'll be a good husband if you'll be a good wife, it's unconditional. You say, I'll be a good husband even when you're a sick wife, or I'll be a good wife when you're a poor husband.
That's what a covenant is. A covenant says, I'm in it for keeps. It's unconditional, it's permanent. But because we live in a contract world, we tend to view God as a contract God. And we start thinking that if we're not careful, if we don't try to live good enough, if we don't do the right things, that God will reject us, that we think it's based on our earning.
That's what humanity always defaults to; how can I earn this? But our God's not a contract God. He's a covenantal God. He's a promise making, promise keeping God. And so we worry that if we break our side of the contract, he will evict us from his grace.
But what we learn in chapter 15, that he's offering to us a covenant, not a contract through the person, through the seed of Abraham, which is Jesus. You might be wondering today some of these kinds of questions. Maybe you've been straying with doubt. Recently, you've been doubting some things. And as we look at the text today, I believe you're going to hear some assurances that will help you with your doubts.
Maybe you're even questioning how in the world can I be right with God? And you've never entered into a covenant with God believing His promises. I prayed today that you'd hear the Holy Spirit move in your life in such a way that you would say yes to Jesus, that you would say yes, I want to be. I want to be in a covenant with God through the person of Jesus, we need assurances. Maybe you're just here today.
And how can I truly trust in his saving promises? That's what we're looking at today. In Genesis 15, we will find assurance because God himself shows us that he is the one who secures his own redemptive promises through the person of Jesus. Moses repeated, recorded in Genesis 15, how God reassured Abram by declaring him righteous through faith, by unilaterally making a covenant in blood guaranteeing the future fulfillment of his redemptive promises. And I believe that we can have the confidence and the faith that Abram displays here by just believing God's word and God's promises that he'll keep his promise to us.
As we look at the text today, I think we'll see three assurances that secure our confidence in God's saving promises. So let's go to the book, let's hear what God says to us today, and then we'll unpack it together. Genesis 15:1-21 (ESV) 1 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield;
your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of the LORD came to him: “This man shall not be your heir;
your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness. 7 And he said to him, “I am the LORD who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”
8 But he said, “O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” 9 He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. 11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. 13 Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. 14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.
15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” 17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites. This is God's word. Amen. We're looking for three assurances that secure our confidence in God's saving promises. This is the first assurance that we see here:
1. The assurance of justification.
The assurance of justification. It's amazing to me that we only have to get to the 15th chapter of the first book of the Bible. We don't have to wait for Romans. We don't have to wait until the New Testament.
We can find the doctrine of justification right here in chapter 15. In fact, a hinge verse, perhaps one of the most quoted verses in the New Testament. One of the most important verses to the doctrine of justification is Genesis 15:6. You want to memorize this small little verse. It says this, 6 “And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”
You see that in verse 6; it’s so important. By faith, Abraham believed God's promises and God counted it in the righteousness column. Now this is what we have to understand here. Abraham was not perfect, he was not sinless. But he believed God. And he believed what God said that I'm going to provide for you a seed, an offspring.
We have the word offspring in our ESV translation and in the Hebrew, it's literally the word “seed” singular. In fact, in Hebrew, we capture it as masculine singular. It could only be fulfilled by a male child, a son. I'm going to provide for you a seed. Now, certainly in the immediate future, he was talking about Isaac, his son Isaac.
But we know in the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and on the way to Judah, all the way through David, all the way into 2000 years ago, Jesus is the fulfillment of that promised seed. That masculine, singular, seed, offspring. I'm gonna provide that for you. And Abraham believes this. And God says, I'm going to count your faith, your trust in my promise, in the category of righteousness.
Because you can't be righteous. You're a fallen man. You're sinful. I'm going to count it as righteousness, and I'm going to pay for it later. And that's what we're going to see in this chapter.
We're going to see the doctrine of justification lived out. Now, before I dig in any deeper, let's just get the setting here a little bit. Chapter 12 of Genesis. He calls him out of Ur of the Chaldeans. And he calls him.
He was a pagan. Abram was a pagan. But God chose him. He elected him. He calls him out, and Abram believes he's the father of the faith.
He believes God. He comes out of Ur, which later is known as the city or the land of Babylon. And the Chaldeans are later called Babylonians. He calls them out of that land into the promised land, chapter 12. And then we don't get far into chapter 12 before there's a famine in the land.
And Abram goes south. He goes down to Egypt. And that's problematic later because God gets him out of Egypt, but Egypt is still in Abram and still in Sarah. And they brought some stuff back, including a woman named Hagar. She was an Egyptian servant.
But, you know, that can happen to us, too. In the scripture, every time we see Abram go down, he passes that bad habit on to Isaac and Jacob. They all go down to Egypt, too. Egypt personifies or symbolizes rather, the world. And so every time they go down to Egypt, God has to get them out of Egypt, but Egypt stays in them.
You get out of Egypt, you still have Egypt in you. And God has to get that out of you, too. And so. But that's what's happened in chapter 12, chapter 13. He and his nephew Lot had to separate because their flocks were too big.
Lot made a poor choice, moved down to Sodom and Gomorrah, right? And then chapter 14. Abram, who now has become so wealthy, he's got like 300 male servants working for him. He has to rescue Lot and all the people from down there that got carried away. That's chapter 14.
Now we're in chapter 15. Abram's become a powerful man, but he's still got one very, very important weakness. The land that God promised him is still not his. And the child that God has promised him is still not his.
And he's afraid. He's getting older. He's getting older and he's worried. But here's how God comes to him. After these things, after chapter 12, 13 and 14 that we just talked about, after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram.
Abram wasn't going to the Lord. Maybe he was just carrying us around in his heart, he was carrying it. But God knows your heart. And God speaks to him in a vision.
And he says two things to him. He says that I am your shield and your protector. See, it's a book about God. You can learn a lot about humanity, about the world.
But this book is primarily a book about God. Every page you turn, you learn a new name of God. You learn a new attribute of God, a new character trait of God. He says, I am your protector. I'm your shield.
The ESV says that your reward shall be very great. As a humble student of Hebrew, I prefer this reading, “I am your exceedingly great reward,” as the “King Jimmy” translates it. In other words, here's how God comes to Abram.
Abram hasn't even prayed a prayer yet. At this point, he comes to him and says, Abram, I want you to know something. I'm your protector. I'm your reward.
I know you're looking over here for a reward. You're looking over here. You're close to retirement; I haven't saved enough. You're a young single person;
You want to get married; I haven't found my future spouse yet. I'm getting ready to go to college, but I don't know what to major in. You're always thinking and that's fine. There are things that you have to answer.
But here's how God comes to you, believer. Here's how he comes. He comes saying, I'm your protector, I am your reward. No man will fulfill that emptiness in your heart, young lady. No woman, young man, there's an emptiness in your heart that can only be filled by the person of Jesus.
It's been quoted that the mathematician and philosopher Pascal once said, “There's a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man that can only be filled by the person of Jesus.” He says, I'm your great reward. Don't be afraid, he says. Now, what was Abram afraid of? Well, now we're going to hear verse two.
Abram is going to make his prayer request. He's very humble. In verse 2, “O Lord God.” In the Hebrew, “Adonai Yahweh,” or as the older people would say it, “Adonai Jehovah.” He uses the double here.
If you're reading the English translation, you'll see capital L, lowercase ord, which shows Adonai, the Hebrew word underneath. And then uniquely here, we have capital G, capital O, capital D in the ESV, which shows that Yahweh, the covenantal name of God Jehovah, is underneath the English translation. Very humble here, very worshipful. O Adonai, Yahweh, what will you give me for I continue childless? I have no heir.
In fact, my servant, the leader of my household, Eleazar of Damascus, he's going to be my heir. And then God didn't say anything after verse two. You might say, well, that's because Abram kept on talking. But it might be, as a Hebrew scholar has looked into this and said, there's kind of a Hebrew pattern here. Sometimes we make a prayer request, and when God doesn't immediately answer, we just rephrase the prayer.
Maybe I didn't say it right. Maybe, God didn't hear me. I need to be more clear.
And so the second time, he's a little bit more abrupt. There's no Lord God. It just says, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.”
I don't know how much time took place between verse 2 and 3. I'm not sure about that. Marty Solomon, the guy who looked at this and talked about the Hebraic way of looking at this, said it could have been a couple minutes, couple of days, couple months, a year might have gone by between prayer requests in verse two and verse three.
Sometimes God wants you to really want a thing that you're asking him. And then he answers. In verse 4, And behold, the word of the LORD came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” Literally in the Hebrew here, it says, he will come from your loins, your very own son.
It will come from you, physically. This son will come from you. This will be your son. Don't be thinking it's going to be a servant or something like that. And then he says, go outside and look at the stars, and if you can count them, that's how many your progeny are going to be.
Your seed is going to be amazing. And then what happens in verse six, Abram believes him.
He puts his faith in God's promises. Does he have a son? Does he have a seed? No. Does he have the land?
No. All he has is God promised and he believes God. And God says (“cha ching”) I'm counting that as making you right with me. Which is the doctrine of justification. I'm counting it as righteousness.
That's what I'm counting it as.
When we talk about the seed, Paul picked that up in the book of Galatians. He talks about the identity of this seed that was promised to Abraham in Galatians 3:16 (NKJV) Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,” who is Christ.
Paul reads Genesis 15 and he says, Oh, that was Jesus. That was Jesus that God was promising Abraham. Right there, that was Jesus. The seed he promised back there when he said, “he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel,” back in Genesis 3:15, that was that ark.
That door to the ark was Jesus. Because he said, “I am the door no one enters in except by me,” right? He's the ark. “There's therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
He's the ark. And now we find out he's this promised seed. And then Paul picks up verse 6 of Genesis 15:6. In Romans 4, he says this, Romans 4:3-5 (ESV) 3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”
4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. That word counted could be translated, calculated or imputed. Abram had righteousness imputed to his account that he did not earn. Why?
Because he believed God. He believed his promise. That's the biblical definition of justification; a legal act of God in which He declares a guilty sinner to be "not guilty" and "perfectly righteous" based solely on the work of Jesus Christ, applied by grace and received through faith. But even more than that, not only not guilty, but righteous because of faith in Jesus.
If you overdraw your banking account, they'll send you a notification. It's called a notification of NSF, non-sufficient funds. And let's say you overdraw by $100. They're going to charge you $100 plus a $35 service charge to get you back. That means you are forgiven, you're back to zero.
But you have nothing to spend. You need a deposit, so that now you've got a positive balance. Justification is not just getting us back to zero with God. So now I got it.
Now that I'm saved, I'm right with God. Now I've got to keep myself saved. I have to keep earning. No, no. The same grace that saves you, keeps you so that his righteousness is imputed into your account because of Jesus.
He believed God, and God counted it to him as righteousness. Now, I have sometimes said, okay, here's how you remember the meaning of the word justification: “Just as if I never sinned.” “Just as if I never sinned.” But that actually falls short.
That only gets you to zero. We need something a little more. Do you remember the book written by Mark Twain called “The Prince and the Pauper?” He found the prince was kind of tired. He wanted to see what it felt like just to be anonymous and just not have the weight of being a prince.
And he found a young man that looked like him, and they swapped identities and clothes. You can read that story. That story comes closer to the idea of justification, because we think of justification as God pardoned us. Well, it includes that, but it's not sufficient to explain its whole doctrine. He does forgive us of our sin, but he also imputes Christ's righteousness to us.
And so, like in the Prince and the Pauper, it's not just that he takes away our sin, but that he replaces our rags with his robes of righteousness.
And so we have a new identity and a new reality. Our sin is canceled. But even more than that, his righteousness has been deposited into our account. So that Paul writes in Romans 5:1 (ESV) “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This is the doctrine of justification. It's a legal term where a holy God has looked at you and he's looked at what Christ did for you. He said, if you will believe in Christ Jesus as your Lord Savior, that He died on the cross for your sins, and he was raised from the grave. If you will place your faith in him, then I will take your sin, and I'll put it on him, and I'll put His righteousness on you. I'll take your death, and he'll die your death, and he'll give you his eternal life.
I'll take your separation from the Father, and I'll put it on him, and he'll cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” So that you can receive his sonship and have his relationship with the Father. This is the great exchange. This is the doctrine of justification. Paul says we can find it.
The New Testament says we can find it in Genesis 15:6. It was always God's plan even before the foundations of the world, that he would send Christ Jesus to die and be raised for our justification. You don't have to strive to earn God's approval. In fact, you can't do it.
But you can rest in Christ's righteousness. We have the assurance of justification by faith in Jesus. Well, let's keep going. We need more assurance.
2. The assurance of substitution.
We're going to be unpacking 7 through 17. And it's a very strange segment, as strange goes. This is strange. It's a strange segment of the Bible. And in verse 7 we see he says, And he said to him, “I am the LORD who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”
He's reminding him of where he brought him. I brought you to give you this land. I haven't given it to you yet, but that's what I did. And so verse eight, Abram says,’Well now, okay, we were talking about an heir that you haven't given me yet, but now that you brought up the land thing, by the way.’ 8 But he said, “O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?”
There it is again, ’O Adonai Yahweh.’ How am I to know? Notice the language “that I shall possess it.” How can I be certain? I believe,
but could you give me some bona fides? Could you sign your name on something? Could you give me a sign? How can I know? Which is to have intimate knowledge of how I can really know.
I believe. I believe. It’s like the man who was bringing the demoniac son to Jesus. And Jesus says, “Do you have faith?” He said, “Lord, I believe. Help me with my unbelief.”
“I want to know.”
And so God gives him a strange answer to his “I want to know.” Youk want to know? Okay, go get me a three year old heifer, a three year old goat, three year old ram and two birds.
Did you understand my question, Lord? Apparently Abram understands it. Apparently because without any instruction, Abram goes and cuts the three large animals in half, places them so that the halves are facing one another, and then takes the two birds and cuts their throats so that they're bleeding but does not cut them open, and places them facing each other. I've got an image to show you that many call this the covenant of blood or the path of blood. And it would be a well known covenant that Abram apparently already knew about because God doesn't tell him how to do it.
He just says to go get them. So he has to go to his flock and get them and then he places them so that it goes downhill and a river, a rivulet of blood forms between them. So there's a pathway of blood. Now, what is this about? Some believe it points to the betrothal covenant, which would have been well known to Abram during his day.
In fact, some of that still remains in the Middle East to this day. That idea of a covenant in blood, it certainly was what was called the Suzerain-Vassal Covenant. Greater to lesser, like a king, a Suzerain would have a vassal lord make a covenant. And so the vassal, the lesser, or if it's a bridal, a betrothal covenant, the groom to be that wants to get a wife from the father would go to the father who is greater and say, I want to marry your daughter.
And he'd say, well, good, let's make a covenant. And he would cut the animals. Now, it's his job as the groom to be to walk the path of blood first, walk between. That's his job. And what he's basically saying is, if I don't take care of your daughter, if I don't keep my word, what happened to these animals is going to happen to me.
It's a blood covenant if I don't keep my word. And then the greater party, the father, he's supposed to walk through the same path and get bloody feet too. He's supposed to walk through and say, if I don't give you my daughter and support you the way I promised, may this happen to me. And that's the blood covenant, the betrothal covenant, the Suzerain Vassal covenant, that would have been, I believe, well known in the Middle East and some various representations that are still somewhat present today in the Middle East. And so he knows what to do.
God doesn't even have to tell him how to do it. And he does it. And it would have taken him about all day. He had to go find the animals out of his flock, get the ones three years old, bring them, and do the butchery work of cutting them in half. I know it's graphic, but because we buy our food from Food Lion and Walmart and those kinds of places, and it's in saran wrap and we don't realize, but those of us that grew up spending time on a farm, we know where our food comes from.
This is not that graphic to those of us that recognize that, but it's graphic. And so he does all this butchery work and then apparently the day keeps going on to the point where birds, you know, start like vultures start landing. He's driving them away. Now, maybe he's doing this thinking, now God needs to show up to do his part of the covenant, and I don't see him anywhere. Or maybe he's thinking, I know I'm supposed to go first because I'm the lesser and he's the greater.
And as he started thinking, now, I don't know if I can keep my covenant. My part, he's afraid to put his pinky toe in there. Maybe. Maybe that's it. Whatever the reason, he doesn't walk through.
But the day's going on. In fact, the sun starts to set, and what happens? Verse 12, “As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.”
It's not the first time a deep sleep fell on a man in the Bible. You go back there earlier in the book of Genesis, there's this dude named Adam. God knocked him out, put him in a deep sleep, cut him open, pulled a rib out and made a woman. Right? That's where Eve comes from.
You read the Bible. And so there was a betrothal covenant back there. The word covenant, by the way, is “barit.” In the Hebrew, it means to cut. Some of us use that language today.
We say, I'm going to “cut a deal.” It's that same covenantal language, goes all the way back. And so we see the betrothal of Adam to Eve. That God was the first officiant at the first wedding. He gives him the wife, Eve.
He presents her to him, and Adam says that I'm going to call her “whoaaaman,” right? There's a reason for that, too. Men have been feeling that way ever since.
He puts a deep sleep on Abram. How's he going to keep his side of the covenant while he's taking a nap? Good question. Verse 12, “... And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.” Do you know why?
Because the glory of God moved into that place where he was taking a nap. And the word glory in Hebrew is the Hebrew word “chabod.” And it can also be translated as heavy, because whenever God moves in, he's bigger than everything else. He feels this terrible awe, this heaviness move over him, this great weight.
We know when Eli's sons carried the ark and got it lost and got killed. And the word came back. And one of the wives was having a baby. She named him Ichabod, which means the glory has departed. “Chabod;” the glory of God moved in.
He felt this great dread and darkness fell upon. Then the Lord starts speaking to Abraham in his sleep. He says, no for certain now, what was. What was It Abram asked earlier, he says, how can I know?
God says. He starts his answer, 13 Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.” Remember how I told you how Abraham got out of Egypt? But he didn't get Egypt out of Abraham. He's talking about Egypt right here, that there's a time coming later when the
people of God, the Israelites, are going to be servants to Israel. How long? 400 years, he says. But he says that I'm going to bring judgment on the nation. That's the ten plagues
He's telling right here. He's telling Abram what’s getting ready to happen. But don't worry, don't be afraid. You're going to live to a good old age and you'll be buried. You'll go to your fathers in peace.
And your kids, your progeny, your seed will come back here to this land in the fourth generation. And it seems there's a time clock running. The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete because God is a merciful God and he gives people time to have repentance. And the Amorites, which I think is representative of all of the peoples of Canaan, he says, their sin has not yet reached the level to where I'm ready to use the people of Israel to judge them. So we see this assurance of substitution, because what we have here in this story is that Abram has taken a nap.
He doesn't walk the path, the blood path. How's this covenant going to be kept? Well, we have verse 17, don't we? Verse 17, “When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.” This is emblematic of the presence of God.
We have this pot that's filled with fire that just floats between, and then we have this cloud of smoke that floats back like the pillar of cloud by day that hovered over the tabernacle in the wilderness with Moses and the pillar of fire by night. Smoke and fire throughout the scripture. Up on Mount Sinai. Lightning, thunder, smoke, fire. It's emblematic of the presence of God since Abram was in a deep sleep
and Abram couldn't have paid for it anyway. God walks the path twice. Once for man wants for himself. The price Abram couldn't pay, the price that you couldn't pay, that I couldn't pay, he paid right there. We see it.
We see the emblem. We see the symbology of what Jesus did. He walked the path of blood for me and he substituted the part that I couldn't do. Even if I would have done it, I would have failed.
And it would have cost me, and it would have cost you. He walked it twice. He fulfills both sides of the blood covenant and paid as a substitute with his own blood for our sins if we didn't keep it, and we didn't, he paid for it. And so we see this in the scripture today. It says in Galatians, chapter three, this is Paul speaking to us.
Galatians 3:13-14 (ESV) 13 “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— 14 so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.” Even the prophet Isaiah talks about this and about the coming Messiah and how he would die in our place as a substitution for our sins. It says, Isaiah 53:5-6 (ESV) 5 “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities;
>upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” He was torn, he was cut, he bled.
He walked the covenant both ways because we couldn't. And so Paul writes about this in second Corinthians. He says, 2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV) “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” This is the doctrine of substitutionary atonement that he died in my place. He walked both paths, my part and his part, because I couldn't.
When doubt whispers, look to the cross with new understanding. When you come to the table and you partake of the bread and the cup, do it in remembrance with deeper thoughtfulness and meditation, knowing that Christ paid the covenant breaking penalty himself on the cross. Your security is anchored in his substitutionary death on our behalf. Your assurance rests in him. This leads us to the third assurance we've talked about:
3. The assurance of inheritance.
The assurance of justification, the assurance of substitution, and now the assurance of inheritance. We're at verses 18 through 21, the assurance of inheritance. And he begins to talk about the size of the land and the people in the land that he's going to give to Abraham's seed. And he says in verse 18, “On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram,” There's the word covenant, which means to cut.
Literally saying “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates…” And then he names ten people groups that actually are possessors currently of the land. And he's basically saying to him here, I know you don't have a son yet, and I know you don't have the land yet. And it looks like some other people are camping out on it right now. But it's all yours, all coming your way.
And Abram has to, without seeing it, based on the evidence that God has revealed himself to Abram on that basis of faith, he believes. But let's just look at the situation. God promises offspring when Abram has none. God promises land that's occupied. God promises victory over ten established nations.
And Abram's taking a nap the whole time. This story, this segment of the story screams that if God doesn't act, nothing happens. And I'm glad God acted.
And our part is to believe that he's acted. And so the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 4:13 (ESV), “For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.” When did he say heir of the world? Well, for one thing, here he promises from the river in Egypt, which is probably the Nile, to the river Euphrates, which is in modern day Iraq.
Israel never possessed all that land. Did God not keep his word? Or is it still future tense? Or is it to be interpreted as Paul does here? He was actually making a promise to the whole world.
Because later he says to Abram, when he calls him Abraham, he says that through your seed, all nations will be blessed, which is us. And so that all the people that believe in Jesus are children of the faith and therefore grafted into the tree and children of Abraham, the father of faith. And so he says that we are heirs of the world. And this didn't come through law, but through the righteousness of faith. So this inheritance that's ours is bigger than just a small place.
It's the whole world. And not just the world, but it's the new heavens and the new earth. Because everything that belongs to Jesus is now ours. Look what it says in Romans 8:16-17 “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” Co heirs with Christ. Whatever belongs to Jesus belongs to us now. Whatever righteousness, whatever right place with the Father, whatever he owns, we own is all ours.
I don't see it yet. It's not mine yet. Welcome to Abraham's club. So in Hebrews chapter 11, we read that they saw from afar, right? These all died in faith, having seen it from afar without having believed it or not having received it rather.
But they were seeking a homeland in Hebrews chapter 11. A better country, a heavenly one. And therefore God was pleased to build them a city. Oh, it points to an inheritance.
You know what we have in chapter 15 here we have the whole Bible in one chapter. We really do. We have the whole story in a little story to get us ready for the rest of the story. We even have the future inheritance that is to come. Let's say you make an offer on a house.
I remember we made an offer on this building. And by the way, I prayed for years. How many years did our church pray for a home of our own? We were portable. We met in schools and rented places; do you know how long?
For 19 years; 19 years. We grew to about 2 or 300 people at one point and we still didn't own a building. And we kept praying. And then in 2010, we made an offer on the old Regal Cinema and closed on it.
There's a miracle. They wanted $2.2 million. We offered them $285,000 and they took it. Six acres, 26,000 square foot building. God made me wait 19 years; made us wait 19 years.
Because he only does miracles. He doesn't do little stories. He does God sized stories.
And then we closed on it. We went over to the legal office over here in town, signed papers and took pictures. It was so exciting. But then that was September 2010. We didn't have the first service here until May 1, 2011.
Because then you got to inhabit the land. You have to get victory over the remodel.
The inheritance is out there, but the wilderness is still in front of us. But it's coming. Oh, it's coming. Be assured that our future is secure. Whatever belongs to Jesus belongs to us.
The ending of the story is already written. We just hadn't got to it yet. We've seen three assurances we are right with God through faith. That's justification. Christ took the penalty for our sin, which is death.
That's substitution. Our future with God is secured in Christ Jesus. That's our inheritance. As I was studying for the sermon this week, I kept humming a song. And finally I realized what I was humming.
It's a Chris Tomlin song, “I'm forgiven because you are forsaken. I'm accepted. You were condemned. I'm alive and well.
Your spirit is within me. Because you died and rose again. Amazing love How can it be that you, my King, would die for me? Amazing love I know it's true and it's my joy to honor you in all I do honor you.” Oh Jesus, I'm looking for you on every page and as I grow in Christ I look for you on every face that I meet to see if I might find Jesus in their eyes and if not, I might introduce you there.
Are you assured? Stop doubting and believe. Let's pray.
Lord, I pray first for the person that came in on a thin thread today. Someone invited you.
You know you need help. Would you humbly say today, I'm a sinner? Would you admit it? I'm a sinner. I need a savior.
And today, as the Holy Spirit knocks on your heart's door, I pray you'd answer.
I pray you'd confess your sins. That you would invite Jesus to be your Lord and savior. Praying like this, Dear Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner. I believe you died on the cross for my sins.
That you were raised from the grave and that you live today. Come and live in me. Forgive me of my sins. Adopt me in your family as a child of God. I want to follow you with my life for the rest of my life.
I believe that the Bible says that you'll be saved. And others are here today. You're a believer already, but you've been doubting, you've been feeling dry, you've been looking for something in Egypt. And he's calling you back to himself, saying, I am your protector, I am your reward.
Would you turn your eyes back upon Jesus today? For it's in his name we pray. Amen.
Audio
Good morning, Church. Thank you so much for being here today. We are continuing a series that we started just a couple of weeks ago called the Story. We're going through, really what you might call the metanarrative of the whole Bible. And so we're going from Creation all the way to consummation Genesis to Revelation, and just in 12 weeks, so we can't cover everything.
I would encourage you, if you want to know all of what the Bible says, you're going to have to dig in and start reading it every day to yourself. Did you know that if you read about 15 minutes a day, you'll read the Bible in a year? Isn't that wild? It's not that hard to do. Just read a little bit every day and you'll get it done.
But we're going to spend some time over the next few weeks just digging in on some very key stories. And today is among them, perhaps one of the chief stories of all of scripture, someone that you may have heard of before. Famous theologian R.C. Sproul says of Genesis 15, where we're going to be today. He said, if I only could keep one chapter, if somehow I got put away and all I could have was one chapter of the Bible, I'd want Genesis chapter 15.
And I think you're going to see why as we dig in today. Over the last few weeks, we've talked about the creation, that God, what God made was good, that he made man in his own image. But sin came and entered the world, and God, in spite of that, still had a redemptive plan, really right there in Genesis 3 begins to tell us about the Savior who is to come. And then right after that, we have this catastrophic event where a flood came, the Lord sent it, and yet in spite of that, he still preserved a remnant. This is going to be kind of the key to every story, is there's some conflict, there's some battles, but there's also what God is doing in the midst of that.
And today we're going to talk about the covenant that he makes with us. That is an eternal covenant. We come to this moment where the story narrows its focus to one man. His name's Abram. You've probably heard of Abraham.
He gets named renamed Abraham later in the story, but Abram. And God makes a covenant with him that's based completely on God and has almost nothing to do, if I would argue, in fact, nothing to do with Abram other than Abram is obedient. And so God shows up in a powerful way and makes a covenant now, we're using this word covenant today. And I feel like I should take just a moment to explain what I mean by that. Because we are a contract people.
We understand contracts very well. A contract is like a transaction. You sign a contract with your Internet provider, with your doctor, with various. You sign contracts to buy houses and things like that. And the contract idea is if you stop paying, they stop providing, or they can come take it, whatever it is.
That's the idea of a contract. That's not the idea of a covenant. A covenant should be things like your relationship to God, and it should be things like your relationship to your spouse, which is the idea. And we say this in our weddings. We say, for better, for worse, I'm yours no matter what.
Sickness and in health. That's the idea of a covenant. It's more unconditional. It's not temporary. But we live in a contract world.
In fact, we make even things like marriage contracts. And we often treat God like a contract God. We get very confused about this because what happens to us is we make mistakes, you and I. I'm the same way. We make mistakes. I'll make probably at least one, probably many more than one mistakes this week.
I might think a thought, I might say a thing, I might do the very thing I just desire not to do. And in spite of that, God forgives. This is the idea of the covenant keeping God. But my problem is. And your problem might be, at times I think of God like a contract God.
So when I have a season of brokenness where I fail or a season of doubt, I worry that the deal's off. I worry that he's no longer in love with me, you know, that he no longer cares for me. And I live in this state of fear at times, and maybe you feel this at times, that God is going to evict us somehow from his grace. And so we default to an earning approach rather than a receiving approach to our faith. It makes us wonder, am I okay?
Am I right with God? Genesis 15 tells us something we need to hear today. It begins very early in the scriptures. Some people are astounded by this, that God. This idea of God showing us favor through salvation in Jesus Christ.
We think that's a New Testament story. And it is. But he started that story from the beginning that God has been a covenant keeping God from day one. It's who he is. And it's so good for us to read this morning early in Scripture that God keeps his faith to people not because they're good, but because he's good.
I hope that's encouraging and good news to you today. What we're going to see in Genesis 15 is the Lord reassuring Abram that righteousness comes through faith. That righteousness comes by this unilateral covenant that God himself makes by blood and guarantees this future fulfillment and promises. We can live with a confident assurance. Friends, we don't have to live in this state of He's a contract God.
Am I okay? We don't have to live that way anymore. Now, should we live in obedience to His Word? Yes, but not as a result of earning, but as a result of love and care. How can we do this?
I believe the text is going to show us three. And these are going to be like really, really common assurances. But I think you will desire to hear these today. Three assurances to secure our confidence. Let's dig in.
We're going to read most of Genesis 15 together. Now, this may be a famous story to you, a well known story. Please, I pray you'll see it with fresh eyes with me today. Genesis 15, verse 1. It says, after these things.
The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram, I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. But Abram said, o Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. And Abram said, behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.
And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside, this is a good thing here. And said, look towards the heavens and number the stars, if you are able to number them.
Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. Take note of that verse, Church. He believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. Verse 7.
And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But he said, O Lord, O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? He said to him, bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove and a young pigeon. And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half.
When the birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram Drove them away. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs. Wow.
And they will be servants there. They will be afflicted for 400 years. This is quite a promise. But I will bring judgment on that nation that they serve. And afterward, they shall come out with great possessions.
As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation. For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. Okay, we got a lot to talk about there.
Church, verse 17. When the smoke had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, to your offspring, I give this land for from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Berezites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, which is my favorite of these, and the Jebusites. God bless the reading of his Word. Amen.
I told my dad this week as we were studying, I said if I was going to name a people, I would name them the Girgashites. That's fun. So fun to say. Not a good people, though, if you read about them in Scripture. But anyway, we're digging into these three assurances that secure our confidence in God's saving promises.
The first one is this. We have the assurance of justification. Justification. Not in our goodness, in our works, not in just how great we are. Because all of those things really don't meet the standard.
Standard of God. No. The righteousness that is counted to Abram and that is also counted to us is faith is belief. Abram actually shows quite a bit of unbelief here, really. In this story, it says right away, chapter 15.
The word of the Lord comes to him in a vision. Fear not, I'm going to make you great. If I heard that from God, I'd be like, hot dog. This is great. Not Abram.
Now, he's heard a little bit of this before, and now he's hearing it again from God and going, how can this be possible? Because I'm getting old, God, and I don't even have any kids. The stuff that I have Earned and gained in this life, it will go to someone who's not even my blood. How can this be possible? That's understandable.
So in verse two, he says, lord, I don't have kids. I have no offspring. The. This Eleazar is going to get it. And Eleazar is just a servant in his house.
Some see this verse 2 and verse 3. They actually see this as a little gap in time because it is strange that in verse two, he says something and then he says almost the identical thing in verse three. So either Abram is just being very repetitive here, which is possible, or a little bit of time passes, God shows up, hey, I'm going to make you great. Your reward will be great God. How's the Spirit possible?
Then a little season passes and he comes back and said, hey, God, I have no offspring. In fact, notice this verse two, he shows up saying, oh, Lord God, what will you give me? It seems kind of humble. Seems. And then verse three, it says, behold, you have given me no offspring.
Sounds more accusatory all of a sudden. Perhaps some time did pass between this. He says, my household, there's going to be no heir. And God comes to him and says something very plain. Because God, guess what?
He loves us. And his English to us, his language to us is often very plain. He says, your heir is going to be your son. It's way more graphic there in the Hebrew, it literally means out of your loins. So guess what, Abraham, he's going to come from you, okay?
It's not going to be some random servant. He's going to come from you. Now, sadly, I'm not getting into this story today, but Abraham and. And Sarah later said, well, I guess it has to come from you, Abraham, but apparently it's not supposed to come from me. And so they kind of jumped the gun.
And there's a whole other story there about Ishmael, and it's a mess. But here, he hears this. He hears. And God does this wonderful thing that I think he does for us a lot. He kind of gives us a little fresh air moment.
He says, hey, come outside with me. I don't know if they're having this initial conversation in the tent. What's going on? He says, hey, let's go out here. I want you to tell me if you can number the stars.
Can you count them? So shall your offspring be. Paul picks up this idea, in fact, because what God says here in verse 5 is, so shall your offspring. Offspring is singular here, so shall your seed be. It'll number the stars.
Paul picks this up in Galatians and says, now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He does not say, to seeds as of many, but as of 1, and to your seed who is Christ. So right away, here in chapter 15, God is reminding us of this promise that a savior is coming that will redeem us. And then we get the wonderful verse. Friends, I want.
If you hear nothing else today, I want you to take this verse in. If you read the story of Abraham, you will see a man who makes a lot of mistakes. He goes down to Egypt with his wife and the Pharaoh and others were like, wow, your wife's kind of good looking. He says, she's not my wife, she's my sister. He does this in order to avoid some sort of danger.
And perhaps he would have been in danger, but this is a strange thing to do. Okay, I've never told anybody my wife's my sister. That's weird. But he does it to save his own skin. He's worried, he's afraid, and he does many various things in scripture.
Read the story of Abraham, you'll go, this guy's kind of a mixed bag. David would be another example. King David, the Bible says he's a man after God's own heart. And yet David is a mess. He's both really great at times and really, verse six reminds us of something.
Church, I pray you can hear today, your faith is what's counted as righteousness. Your works should follow in line with the fact that God is good and he loves you and you love Him. So you respond to his favor and his love with obedience, but not out of result of earning it. Because guess what? You can't.
The covenant that God keeps with you is on him. And so when you live in this kind of contract idea of every day that you mess up or you do this and you do the very thing that you should do. You say, God must be mad at me. I'm going to give him some space. Which is insane, because the very place you should go when you are stuck, when you are broken, when you are in need, is the feet of Jesus.
But something in us says, I'm not okay, I need to distance myself from him. That's not true. Because God is not a contract God, he keeps covenants and he loves you in spite of you. And me too, friends, your faith is what's counted as righteousness. Paul connects this all together.
Romans, chapter four, it says, what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. And to the one who does not work, who believes in him, who justifies the ungodly, his faith, faith is counted as righteousness. He's saying, look, I'm not talking so much about work, because work, it indicates the idea that we could somehow earn favor with God and that would be our due.
But that's not the case with faith. This is really getting at the biblical idea of justification that this legal act where God declares a sinful person, you, me, not guilty, where he decides not guilty instead, perfectly righteousness, perfectly righteous based solely on him, on the work of Jesus, applied by grace and received by faith. He later writes in Romans 5, he says, Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Here's what's happened here. God has done a replacement.
We now have his righteousness and he has taken our guilt. That's the idea here. It reminds me of a story that I read many years ago, Mark Twain's the Prince and the Pauper. If you've never read that, it's a great story, short story, not a hard read. This is kind of the idea of what God has done with us.
These two young men look similar and they decide kind of flippantly, hey, let's trade places. There's a prince who's living in the royal courts. He's the heir to the throne. And then there's this pauper who's a man on the streets suffering with that and dealing with, you know, having very little. But both of them kind of see their lives as I'd like to not do this, right?
I'm not having that much fun in the royal courts and all this. I'd rather be out here with you, and no, I'd rather have three meals a day. I mean, you seem to have your stuff together. So they do a little swap, and the book's fantastic. They learn a lot as they spend time in these opposite roles.
What they primarily learn is, like, life is hard no matter where you are. Like, you can be up, you can be down. Life can be difficult no matter what the situation is. But I thought of this story today because, in a sense, this is what Christ Jesus, what God, this covenant keeping God has done for us. He says, hey, I'm the heir.
I'm the Son of righteousness. And so I tell you what, let's trade places. And this is essentially what he does on the cross is, I'm going to trade places with you. I'm going to take your guilt, I'm going to take the wrath. I'm going to take your sin, and I'm going to deal with it.
This is the idea of justification. So, friends, let me put this really plainly to you. Every day, believers in the room, every day that you make the decision that God is distant from you because of your brokenness, that God would rather be alone from you, every day that you make that decision and just say, hey, God must be mad at me. His grace must be separate from me. Every day that you say that, you really deny the power of the cross, that's just true.
I want to urge you, friends, that those are the exact moments you should run to Jesus. And he is better than any friend you've ever had, any brother, any parent. He's way more. He's forgiving. Now, look, there is conviction.
Part of what the Holy Spirit does is convict us. That feeling you get at times of, I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have thought that. That is of God, sure.
But to go there and say, all right, now he's done with me. He's angry with me. That is your flesh. That is the way we approach one another. It's not how God approaches us.
So, friends, I don't know how you've come in this place today, but if you feel a distance to God, I want you to know something. He didn't move. You did. He didn't. He's ready.
His arms are open. He's done everything necessary for you to be right. If you're feeling convicted, good. But run to the Savior. It's crazy, too, because the very thing, the very power you need, the very grace you need to overcome whatever it is you're facing is with him, not with you.
We don't have to strive to earn his approval. Indeed, we can't. Not by our effort.
Instead, he just desires our relationship. This intimacy that he's offered. The Bible puts it really interesting throughout. It starts back here in the early text and then carries all the way to the apostle. Peter says this too.
He says simply, be holy, for I am holy. Be holy, for I am holy. That seems like a works thing, but it's not. It's more like I'm spending such time with you, I'm in such community with you that the way you are is the way I am. I just want to be like you.
This is more like a Father and Son. The Son who loves the Father and just wants to. I mean, I could tell you right now. As a teenager, I didn't want to mow the yard. But when I was a little kid, I wanted a little play lawnmower so I could be there mowing with my dad.
Because there was a different kind of love then. I just wanted to do what my dad was doing. It looked cool. He's out there building stuff. He's working on stuff.
I want to be a part of that. Somewhere in my teen years, I said, this is actually work. Like, I don't really want to do this, but this is. That kid is more like the relationship we have with God. I want to be holy because you're holy, not because you require it.
If God required our holiness, we are in big trouble. No, he's already taken care of that in the person of Jesus, who was perfectly holy. So now we desire holiness because I just want to spend time with Dad. I love you. I want to be like you.
You see the difference? I pray you do, so we can have this assurance of justification. The next thing we see here is this assurance of substitution. Now, this story is wild, and you may not see this plainly. I pray you will, after we've discussed it together.
There is a substitution that is on display here. It looks like a very strange ritual. And the reason is, is because we don't practice anything quite like this in modern America. Now, I'll have you know, there are still nations, still peoples, like Bedouin tribes in the Middle east that still practice a ritual like this. So it's not that strange to some people.
I think what's particularly strange to us is that we no longer see what takes place on the other side of the grocery store. We show up and the meat is nice, clean and displayed. Somebody killed it. Somebody cleaned it. There's something on the other side that's kind of disturbing and ugly to us.
Quote civilized people, right? What it is, is we've kind of. We no longer see what it took. I think maybe there's a real value in actually being a part of the whole process and getting to see what it cost. Maybe you'd have a better perspective on what you're putting in your mouth.
This is the nature here of Abraham, though. There's no grocery stores, friends. This is normal stuff. I have to butcher an animal. This is what they do to eat.
There's nothing really disturbing to him about this story. It's a little weird to us. We need to get over it. Okay? There's a splitting of animals happening here for a covenant.
It's not uncommon in his day. In fact, there's something interesting here. Read this story again as you're following it with me. Right away, God says, hey, I brought you out of Ur of Chaldeans, I'm giving you this land, it's going to be yours. And here we go again.
Abram saying, well, how am I to know this? Now I would say this question is equally if not more valid than the first one. The first one, he's like, how am I going to be great if my line ends with me? Valid question. This one's even more valid to me because he's looking around.
Just before this story, I Abram has rescued Lot. And there's this huge battle that takes place. There are already foreign kingdoms and kings in the land. So Abraham's going, how am I going to have this land? Because I'm looking around and there are nations of people.
They're listed here. I'm not getting this, Lord, because I'm just one guy, I don't even have sons. And yeah, he's apparently at this point he's pretty wealthy, he's got a lot of servants. But how am I to fight all of these nations? It's a valid question.
God, how am I to know this? And God does something here that's so strange and yet this is who God is. I'm going to paint a bigger picture. You're asking one question. I'm going to paint a much larger picture.
So he says, hey, I want a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtledove, a pigeon. This is what some commentators have called a common betrothal covenant. You can pop up this image for me if you will. I know this to some degree sounds disturbing to you, but it wasn't to them. It was common to them.
In fact, what you'll notice if you read verses nine and ten right in there, God never tells Abram to cut the animals. He says, bring these animals. Abram knows what to do. He immediately starts to cutting and starts to putting things in place so that there's a path between the animals. That this covenant was called the blood path.
And you're like, ugh, calm down, alright. This is what they did. This is in fact a common thing they would do in their day, from father to son in law. Some of you fathers in the room are going to like this. All right, this is what this meant.
Hey boy, you go and prepare this covenant. You cut these animals, make this blood path and you're the first to walk through it. And when you walk through it, here's what you're saying. I'm going to care for. I'm going to be good to.
I'm going to. I'm going to take care of your daughter. Then the father walks through there and says, I'm going to do everything on my part to help you do well in life, son. You are now my son. But both of them are walking through there and saying the same thing.
Be it unto me if I don't keep my covenant, I'll be like these animals and you can take me out. Hey, this isn't so bad. I got three daughters, y'. All. I'm kind of thinking about this one.
I don't know if this isn't still a good idea.
This is what a covenant should be. It should be costly. They're saying, hey, I'm going to take seriously what I've committed to here. And so Abram immediately starts the process. He gets it all prepared.
And I don't know if he's waiting on God or if God was intending for him to go ahead and walk the blood path. The scripture is completely silent on this. What we see is he prepares the ritual. And then birds of prey begin to try to land on the carcasses. So some time is passing, and then God shows up.
Here's why this is so phenomenal, why this is an assurance of substitution. Abram could not walk this path. Honestly. He could not walk down that and say, be it unto me if I don't keep my end of the bargain. Friends, we can't keep our end of the bargain.
Let that sink in for a second. This is what's unique about faith in Christ. It is coming to the table, saying, I can't do it. So what does God do? God shows up and knocks him out.
It says a deep sleep comes upon him. A deep sleep. We've seen this once already in scripture. It happens to Adam, and something wonderful happens for Adam. He wakes up and there's a woman.
Hallelujah. Something wonderful happens here for Abram, too. He goes into this deep sleep. It says, a darkness, a deep dread. That has more to do with this idea of.
You ever experienced such an awesome moment that it leaves chills on you that you're, like, shaken by it? That's the idea of this. It's not so much like a horror movie. It's more like a chill bump. God is big, showed up kind of moment.
That's what's going on. And so now he observes what he observes God passing through the path. Verse 17, it says, A smoking fire pot, a flaming torch. The presence of God now walks the path. Here's what God is saying.
Don't miss this today, Church. Here's what he's saying. You can't walk this path. I can and I have. My substitution is this.
Hey, you get to have this covenant by faith. It is counted to you. Now, in the midst of that deep sleep, we hear some astounding stuff. This is like, this is a hard promise for Abram. He comes and says, look, guess what?
You're not going to see it. I know you're asking specifically, how am I going to know that I'm going to inherit this land? And God basically says, you're not going to see it in your lifetime. You're going to go to sleep, you're going to go to your death and your peace. You're going to be buried with your fathers.
Things are going to be pretty well for you. But your offspring, your kids, your kids, kids, there's going to be a season of suffering before this happens. Now, we could go into a great deal of detail as to why God promises this. There's a ton of writing on this as to why. But I think at the end of the day, what's really going on is God has to prepare his people to inherit the possession that they were not ready to receive.
That's a whole different sermon for another time. But essentially, God is going to give a season of deep valley for the children of Abraham so that he could make them one, so that they could understand God's plan and promise. And it took a long time to do it. But he tells Abraham this, and then he says something wild in verse 16. He says, in fact, I'm going to kind of keep them there.
I'm going to be developing them, working on them. It's going to be hard. It's going to be a challenge. Don't worry, though. I'm going to judge that nation.
I'm going to bring them out with great possession. They're going to be okay. And part of the reason I'm doing this is because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. There's something wild going on throughout all of Scripture that God is being patient with the sinfulness of man, with the wickedness of people, that he's actually given great deals of time, great spans of time for people to come and repent and be made right. We read this last week, that in Second Peter, I think it was.
It says, God is not delayed as we would think, so a thousand years as a day. To him, this was that. But it goes on to say in that Scripture, he desires that all men would come to repentance. He doesn't desire that any would be judged. And yet we know a right.
Many of them will never be right, be made right, never come into fullness. Here he says, these Amorites, this is meant to depict the nations around Abram. At this point, look, I'm giving them. Here's what God's saying. I'm going to give them more time.
They're a mess. You can study these people. I would encourage you to do it. They were doing some dreadful things. There were child sacrifices.
It was an awful time period. God says, I'm going to give them a little more time to repent, to be made right.
And so then God, in verse 17, he walks down the aisle. Now, this is meant to point you to something else. Reread verse 17. Right now it says, when the sun had gone down, it was dark. Behold a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the pieces.
This should bring to mind you Bible readers in the room, the very way in which God shows Himself in the Exodus story that he comes with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. These are very similar images. God is the one who walks through this path. His Holy Spirit walks through this path. In Galatians 3, Paul connects Christ's crucifixion to this very blood path idea.
In Genesis 15. Look at Galatians 3, it says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. So Jesus has now granted us access, all of us, all nations, to the blessing of Abraham. In fact, the prophet Isaiah prophesied this very substitution hundreds of years before Jesus.
Isaiah 53, it says, he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. With his wounds we are healed all we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Paul writes in 2nd Corinthians 5, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God. This is what's happened here. This is why it's strange for us to try to distance ourselves from this holy God, because he's done everything necessary that we could be made right. He has substituted himself in our place. I heard this image many years ago, but I want to bring it up to you again.
This is the idea that essentially what's happened is we come into the courtroom. We come into the courtroom where God is just and he is judge, and he has every right to be that. This is his creation, this is his world, and he has the right to justly deal with us, and he will do so. But what's crazy about his story that he planned from the beginning of time is, is that when we come to face the violation, when we come. Let's make it as simple as this.
We come to pay a traffic ticket. We come saying, hey, look, I was speeding. I was wrong. And we do, like a plea for judgment or whatever, and we ask, hey, be merciful Me on this. I did this.
What God has essentially done is hit the gavel and said, you're guilty, but then walks on the other side and pays the fine. This is the crazy thing that God has done for us. Yes, we're guilty, but, yes, he's paid. He's our substitution. So, friends, when doubts, when that whispering voice, I can't believe you did that again.
You know that voice. I can't believe you said that. I can't believe after all this time you claim to walk with Jesus, after all this time, you still get that angry. You still throw things, you still shout. I can't believe that whispering voice.
God's angry. God doesn't want to be with you.
Look to the cross when you hear that little whisper, that little voice, because the cross should remind you of something really important. I wasn't good enough, but he was. There's nothing I can do to make him love me any less. Now, that's not free. As Paul writes in another place.
That doesn't mean, hey, keep on sinning so that grace may abound. Absolutely not, he says, but rather when I hear that dark voice, that lie. Because what that is is a lie. God doesn't want to be with you. God can't stand you.
That's not true. He did everything for you. This story is God's covenant to you.
Your security is anchored in that sacrifice. And then the last thing. So we've got an assurance of justification of substitution and then an assurance of inheritance. Of inheritance. God defines the boundaries of the promised land here way bigger than anything we ever really see them accomplish.
I think there's a reason for that. I think God is essentially saying to us through the whole story of Scripture that, hey, this big promised land they never really saw it come to fruition. It's coming, though. He says, I'm going to make it your inheritance. Look at verse 18.
Will be from Egypt, the great river in Egypt, to the great river Euphrates. I can tell you right now, they never quite got that far north. And if he means here, and I think he probably means here, the Nile River, I'm telling you, they never got that far south. At the biggest point in time, when Solomon was at his greatest, when Israel was at its largest, they didn't reach either one of these rivers. It wasn't even close.
So why would God say this? It seems to have never happened. Well, the promise was in the seed. Who is Jesus, who's going to bring around an eternal covenant with us? That is probably.
I think this is meant to be an exaggerated thing for Abram to hear, so that we would hear it and go, it's going to be big. It's going to be a huge promise. And then he goes on to say, and I'm going to give you the land of all these peoples. And I did a deep dive this week. I'm weird, right?
I found this so fun. Like, I took just that verse and said, all right, where are all the instances of these peoples in the Bible? Because some of them are strange. I didn't remember the Girgashites. I didn't remember the Rephaim.
That one seems weird in the mix. All of these are talked about, some of them in greater detail in scripture. He says, I'm going to give you all this land, and essentially all of these peoples, they're either going to come under you and be blessed by you, or they're going to have to move on. And some of them actually end up kind of like the Kenites, for instance, are generally pretty friendly to the Israelites. So I think when it says, I'm give you their land, they're going to see you and say, hey, I want to come underneath that.
It wasn't all based on conquest, but this promise to you, to me, to Abram, this one should look impossible. It's supposed to. It's supposed to. Sometimes we ask God questions, hey, how's this going to happen? How is it that you're going to do this thing you're saying you're going to do?
You want me to be more evangelistic in my workplace? You want me to be more missional. And we start asking, what's that going to look like? You know, when is that going to happen? God, I have a sense of calling on my Life or whatever it is you've been saying.
I feel like one day I'm going to be this. And you begin to ask God. And sometimes. Sometimes God actually shows you what it's going to look like. And then you're like, abram.
And go, I'm very scared now. You ever hear from God and you're like, I kind of wish I hadn't asked. I kind of wish you hadn't said. Because now that I know, I'm terrified. God, you're telling me I'm going to wipe out all these.
I'm going to be a part of taking this great and vast land. Here's what this tells us about God's inheritance, about God's promises. He makes promises to Abram that he will be a great nation when Abram has no kids. He makes promises to Abram that he will have this nation when it is fully occupied. He makes promises to Abram that he will have victory over 10 well established people groups.
And the whole time Abram's taking a nap. This is who God is. He shows up to us and screams this really important story. This is what this story should point you to. This will only happen if God does it.
This will only happen if God does it.
And he will do it. And that time is coming. Paul writes in Romans 4 that Abram's inheritance. He's not only the heir, he's the heir of the world. Listen to this.
Romans 4. For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. Look, friends, we're heirs of God. Heirs with Abraham, Fellow heirs with Christ. When we commit and have faith in Christ Jesus.
When we say, I am in that covenant with the Lord Jesus because of his sacrifice, his blood, I say yes to Christ. Then Romans 8 applies to us. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit. That we are children of God and have children. Then heirs.
Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. So here's what's happened, friends. You weren't good enough. God was right and he came in and substituted himself in your place. In fact, you deserved to be the sacrifice.
But you couldn't do it. And so he did it. And now he's already signed the deed to the house. Here's what's happened. Basically, friends, as long as we're in this side of heaven, the offer on the house, eternal life.
It's been accepted. The deed's been signed. It was signed in the blood of Jesus. The closing date is set. We Just don't know when it is.
It's coming. We're in this season that many theologians would call the already not yet. In every single way, you have the grace of God. In every single way, he has given you an inheritance that is undefiled, unperishing. That's the way that Apostle Peter puts it.
And it is stored and garden in heaven for you already. And yet not yet. You see glimpses. You see glimpses of God's goodness in your life, but you still also see glimpses of your brokenness. You still see the world as evil.
You still see that things are fluctuating. Sometimes you're like man, things might be getting better. And this is how you're seeing the world go. So has every human throughout human history since the fall of man. You're in the already not yet.
Heaven is in store. The closing date's been set. You just don't have the keys yet.
What does that do then? Jonathan, whoop de doo. I mean, thank you for that wonderful news. I have it and yet I don't see it.
What it should do to you, my friend, is if you're in Christ, you're an heir to the king. Your story should already be looking different. Your hope, the way you live, the way in which you interact with everything, should be out of this observation that you know eternity is in store for you. If you know there's life on the other side, it will cause you to live this one a little different. The way you interact with money, the way you relate to people, will begin to change.
If this is all we have, this life, and this is it, and Maybe we get 80, if that's it, then I could understand us living just for ourselves. We better make the most of it. You better make as much money as you can. You better deal with people shrewdly unless they add value to your life. That's the way you should live if you only have 70 or 80.
But there's something on the other side, guess what? That changes everything. Now all of a sudden, guess what I do. I interact with people because of God's love on them, not because I get along with them. Some people do actually annoy me.
I know you'll never know. I pray you'll never know. It's my goal. But in my heart, I'm like, lord, you be my voice, you be my compassion. Why would I do that if I only get a few days?
Oh, I wouldn't. My assurance of inheritance makes me now deal with my finances, makes me deal with my time, makes me deal with my interactions, totally different. Because I know man, I have an endless supply. God indeed does own a cattle on a thousand hills. This is great.
If I live like a pauper in this life, it's meaningless for eternity. Let me be generous. Let me be outrageously generous. Do you see this? I hope so that the ending of the story is already written and he's going to reign.
So now I live free. I'm so free.
Friends, you've been justified. God has come in. Christ has come in and substituted himself for you. And you have an inheritance stored up, guarded and ready and waiting for you. Live according to these promises that began in Abraham.
And your covenant to him is in faith. Let's pray now. Church. Heavenly Father, thank you so much that you are a good God who makes covenant with us not because of us, but because of you. I'm thankful that this is the kind of God you are to us, because otherwise I'm in big trouble.
But instead, Lord, you took the sacrifice. You took the blood path and made the covenant with me, with Abram. And now to me, your church, Lord, you did that. I'm thankful that that's who you are to us, God. And I'm recognizing that someone has come today and this is really hitting home.
This is moving them in a certain way as they've tried to live good. Maybe they've tried to live right, but they keep failing. There keep being problems and mistakes that make them go, I don't know. I don't know if God cares. I don't know if I'm good enough.
This is good news today, though, that you make a covenant with us. Not because of our goodness, but because of your faithfulness. Friend, if you've come here today and that's the way you've been approaching life, and you understand, you feel the Holy Spirit tugging on your heart today, saying, hey, my son, my daughter, I've done enough that you could be right. I make you holy because of my goodness, not yours. And that's okay.
Would you come by faith? That's what Abram did, right? He believed and it was counted Righteousness. Do you believe? Do you believe that I've paid the ultimate price so that you could be free?
Do you believe it? Friend, if that's you today, would you say a simple prayer of confession? God writes in his Word in Romans, chapter 10. If we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved. Friend, if that's you today, pray with me simply this.
Jesus, I Believe today. I believe you are Lord of all things and you are Lord of my life, Jesus. I believe you died on the cross as a substitute for my sin, my mess you paid. I believe that today, Lord God, I'm thankful for your covenant to me. God, I'm thankful that you raised Christ Jesus from the dead.
Because of my belief in the cross and the resurrection. I'm believing today that you have set me free. Lord, I'm asking now, would you help me to live according to your promises and not according to this whispering voice, these lies I tell myself. Help me to live according to the gospel instead.
Dear friend, if you prayed that prayer with me, you have been saved. And we welcome you to the kingdom of God, a family of believers where we are trying right along with you to just walk by faith in Jesus. Lord, we ask as a church, we ask simply this, Lord, help us to run to the cross and not run away. Help us when we feel broken. Help us when we feel discouraged, to not believe those lies we tell ourselves, but to run to the foot of the cross.
Lord, we ask that you would guide us. Help us to live in such a way that we really believe this inheritance, that this assurance that God, you have a heaven in store for us and it's eternal. Help that to motivate your church to be kind, to be generous, to be free with their time, with their talents, with their treasures, Lord, that they would be generous in all of their being. Because, God, you have given it all. Thank you, Lord Jesus, we pray these things in your name.
Amen.